This kind of rhetoric has led to the justifiable criticism of many Christians at the time supporting slavery. Today, too many Christians are making the same egregious mistake championing abortion as Godly as those before us did with slavery. As the Supreme Court deemed slaves property in 1857, they declared fetuses the mother's “property" in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Ironically, the same party that cited God and property rights to support enslavement now use those identical arguments to justify killing unborn babies while excoriating past generations for slavery. (see Dreadful Scott Decision, Inalienable Rights and Suffering In Utopia)
While Stephens unequivocally lays out the truth, the Confederate leaders knew there were people in their states that would not have fought and died to keep slavery. However, they would sacrifice for state's rights and independence. Therefore, the narrative often pushed to the public was such, which became widely accepted as even Confederate descendants did not want to admit their ancestors fought to enslave others. It is why many in the South today do not personally recognize the Confederate flag as racist, but as a symbol of their pride for the South. (see How The South Was Won and Sibling Rivalry)
Liberty, the same mislead tactic is being used by the Democratic Party today. Progressives have greatly softened the South's real reasoning for secession in our history books, which Stephens confirms was undoubtedly slavery, instead exploiting state's rights. Denying and ignoring the sacrifices of white Northerners fighting to free black slaves, claiming it had nothing to do with that, enables them to promote “white privilege”. (see A Hero’s Story) Propagating America's so-called overt racism from our founding and resulting victimhood empowers progressives to use those characteristics to keep African-Americans chained to the government plantation and white people silent.
Environmentalists are utilizing the misinformation strategy as well. Many people today honestly believe Global Warming is about to destroy the earth. They are fighting for what they believe is right and true, but they have been denied the whole picture. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently stated carbon emissions will destroy the world in 12 years. To save the planet, she proposed the “Green New Deal”. However, if the package is all about rescuing humanity, then why is it full of socialist programs? If the world is ending, why do we need free schooling for everyone? If the earth is damaged, how will providing health care for everyone fix it? If civilization is over in 12 years, then how will eliminating fossil fuels in the next 10 years make any difference? The Green New Deal is not about saving the planet, but shoving socialism down America’s throat, just like the Civil War was not about southern state’s rights, but enforcing African slavery for all time. The puppet masters are using an emotional issue to gain support and following for their true agenda: elitist supremacy and all citizen slavery.
As I have stated multiple times, progressives are purposely rewriting our history for the sole reason of manipulating citizens into conforming to their ideology. Erasing the struggles for freedom and independence, they only highlight victimhood and oppression. Once we are all convinced that we and our ancestors have done wrong and have been wronged, progressives will happily make it all better by giving us a controlled society in exchange for our liberty. We know this because every other socialist country has used the exact same playbook for over 100 years. I just pray with all my heart, Liberty, that America still has time to make one more Hail Mary pass and turn the game around.
That’s my 2 cents.
Love,
Mom
March 11, 2019
Dear Liberty,
Almost immediately following President Abraham Lincoln's election, Southern states began seceding from the Union. As the Republican platform focused primarily on the limitation and eventual abolition of slavery, Southern states wanted nothing of that agenda. While many believe these states were inspired by state's rights, an examination of their Constitution indicates exactly which rights the states really aimed to preserve.
The Republican Party started in 1854 in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, another law negating President George Washington’s Northwest Ordinance of 1789 banning slavery in the Northwest Territory. (see The Birth Of A Movement, Abolishing Mistakes, and Charting A New Course) Efforts escalated after the 1857 Dred Scott Decision, which essentially declared slaves property. (see Dreadful Scott Decision) Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, an Andrew Jackson appointee, wrote the majority decision that ensured slavery would eventually infest all states. Evoking the Fifth Amendment, a slave was deemed property and therefore could not be removed from the owner, even in a free state, without due process. Likewise, a slave was not free, even where slavery was illegal.
With the blessing of Democrat President James Buchanan, Taney believed he ended the slavery issue in America for good with his opinion. If left to stand, slaveowners would have infiltrated free states with their slaves, nullifying state laws against it. The South cheered the blatant overreach of government, as well as the flagrant infringement on state's rights to ban slavery.
During the 1860 Presidential campaign, Lincoln promised the South he was not going after slavery, declaring his desire for unity and finding a solution to keep the country together. However, Southerners pointed to his debates against slavery with Stephen Douglas, a co-author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (see The Birth Of A Movement, Charting A New Course, and Abolishing Mistakes), when running for senator in 1858. (see Disunity Of The Union) There was no doubt Lincoln was an abolitionist and many slave states wanted to break away before Lincoln disrupted their way of life.
On March 11, 1861, just a week after Lincoln's inauguration, and a month before the Civil War began at Fort Sumter (see Sibling Rivalry), delegates from the Southern states gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, to adopt their new Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America. Participating states included South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Delegates used the Constitution of the United States as their base document, making minor changes throughout. While a few adjustments supported new rights for states, the most significant protections added regarded the primary right they wanted really to preserve: slavery.
The delegates rewrote the Preamble from "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union..." to "We, the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character..." This change leads credence to those claiming Southern secession resulted from state's rights. While a few other rights were granted to states, the most impactful changes granted protections to slaveowners.
The Founders avoided the terms slavery or slaves in the Constitution as their hope was all states would follow the lead of those like Massachusetts that already abolished the practice. (see Free And Equal) Instead, they referred to "Persons of Labour or Service", which included white indentured servants. (see The Color-Blindness Of Slavery) Yet the Confederate Constitution specifically addressed slavery.
Clearly protecting the practice, the phrase "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed" was changed to "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." (all emphasis mine) Article I Section 9(4)
Similarly, Article IV Section 2(1) states, "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." The Confederate Constitution adds: "and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired." Therefore, they deny states the right to prohibit or impair one's ability to travel with their slaves, as they are the "right of property". Whether intentional or not, this additional clause boldly underlines the Dred Scott Decision upon Confederate States, basically nullifying a free state's right to choose to be a free one. (see Dreadful Scott Decision)
In Section 2(3) of that same article, additions were made to the paragraph to specifically include slaves, not just a "Person held to Service or Labour”, who may escape.
As the Confederate States hoped to obtain and add territories, a completely new clause was added as Article IV Section 3(3), which legalized and protected slavery in those areas. This guaranteed all new territory in the Confederacy would be a slaveholding one.
CONSTITUTING SLAVERY
"The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees, in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders 'is become the chief stone of the corner' in our new edifice."
"The Confederate States may acquire new territory...In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states."
However, the best explanation for the South's secession comes directly from their newly elected Vice President, Democrat Alexander H. Stephens. In a speech given March 21, tens days after the Confederate Constitution's adoption, not only does he cite slavery and white supremacy as the root cause, he proclaims them as the "cornerstone" of the Democrat-run Confederacy.
"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted."
Stephens continues by explaining how the Founding Fathers were wrong in their assumption that Africans were the white man's equal. Believing slavery was against the "laws of nature," they were unable to resolve themselves, hoping it would eventually disappear over time. Yet Stephens argued the error was not in the institution, but in assuming the races are equal.
“The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Washington] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent (quickly fading) and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the 'storm came and the wind blew, it fell.’”
Presenting the foundations of the Confederacy, Stephens denounces Northerners for ignorantly believing the negro is equal to the white man.
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics...They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man...They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
“As I have stated, the truth of this principle (Negro inferiority) may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science...Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system...The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made 'one star to differ from another in glory.’"
Stephens actually evoked God into their ideology, believing God not only supported slavery, but that he "made" Africans inferior. In fact, The Great Seal of the Confederacy includes the words “Deo Vindice” meaning “With God, our Vindicator”. Stephens concludes his speech by once again proclaiming the cornerstone of the Confederacy: white supremacy and African slavery.